Sameek Roychowdhury, MD, PhD, is a member of the Translational Therapeutics Program at the OSUCCC – James, where his research team uses genomics to identify optimal therapies for patients, also known as precision oncology. Toward that goal, the team evaluates patients with advanced late-stage cancer, develops diagnostics, tools and methods to analyze and interpret genomics data, and devises therapies to be tested in clinical trials.

Dr. Roychowdhury is a medical oncologist and physician scientist who specializes in precision cancer medicine with the goal of discovering biomarkers, developing diagnostic tests, implementing new therapies in clinical trials and studying how cancer becomes resistant to therapy. His precision cancer medicine lab is funded by two National Cancer Institute grants and has partnered with the pharmaceutical industry for implementing new therapies in clinical trials.

Two major areas of research for the Roychowdhury lab are the use of “smart drugs” to target cancers driven by FGFR gene mutations and using a cellular mechanism called “hypermutation” with immunotherapies to boost the immune system. His team also has launched a Body Donation Study for Cancer Research that enables patients and families to help scientists study aggressive cancers.

Dr. Roychowdhury has published research in well-respected journals on the topic of precision oncology, including Science Translational Medicine, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Journal of the American Medical Association and Journal of Molecular Diagnostics.